dave’s blog

coral wonderland

Thu, 26 May 2011 23:12:49 -0400

Museum marketing director Lisa Townsend, exhibit manager Josh Estes, and I work to capturing images of the Cara Merchant remains for the Children’s Museum. At the end of the day we are free to explore nearby waters for an hour, or so.

Tim Burton couldn’t imagine a more amazing place than this. Only 25 feet below the surface off Catalina Island there are giant mounds of color creating a forest of life. The coral reef appears to be quite healthy, though there are, in fact, signs of stress...increased evidence of parasitic damage here and there and greater die-back from the shallows. But there’s something missing: Where are the fish? There aren’t any seen longer than a few inches.

Why? The area south of the Dominican Republic is over-fished by humans. The chemistry of the water has been changed by global warming. The water is more toxic than usual as human wastewater runoff from the main island filters into the sea.

Despite these dark facts, though, today I celebrate the opportunity to see a such a wonderful place. Perhaps the sea will surprise us with its resilience.

meet josh

Tue, 24 May 2011 22:19:23 -0400

Josh Estes is an educator at the Children’s Museum of Indianapolis and he’s here in the Dominican Republic investigating the Capt. Kidd site. The museum is preparing an exhibit on IU’s work and Josh likes to see things for himself so he can better answer questions posed by museum visitors. But today he is clearly having fun...reveling in the calm seas and clear visibility.

In the pic above he’s posing above Cannon 13...one of the three biggest guns among twenty-six or more found in the remains of the Quedagh (or Cara) Merchant...Capt. Kidd’s last conquest of 1699 and the one that led to his eventual hanging in London. Researchers have since uncovered evidence that he did not deserve to lose his life and was, in all likelihood, not a pirate after all. Josh is meeting many of the researchers involved in this kind of work so he can speak with authority when museum patrons ask for details.

dominican navy surveys site

Tue, 24 May 2011 21:49:22 -0400

The Dominican Republic Navy sent a ship to the Capt. Kidd site today. The Captain ferried across to our dive boat to survey the Kidd site first hand. The navy has been assigned stewardship of the historic site and it wants to learn as much as possible. It has assigned a very knowledgeable manager to the task.

Despite all of this important stuff, I’m mostly impressed by how insignificant our boat feels next to the military craft. It’s not huge by any means, but it definitely means business. As I scan her lines, I imagine the ship dates from the US-Korean war and has since been passed along to the DR, where it continues to patrol in warmer waters. If I’m right, that means that this ship has already lasted five times longer than english sailing craft from the 17th century. On the other hand, it has remained at sea only a few years longer than eastern ships made of tropical woods...like the Cara Merchant below, made of teak in Surat India perhaps as early as 1665. It met a premature end in 1699 when burned at sea by sailors anxious to hide their tracks after England decided their Capt. Kidd was a pirate.

The Navy’s commitment to cruise to the site and meet the dive team is significant. The Dominican Republic is providing a tangible sign that it intends on protecting the Capt. Kidd historic site and nature preserve.

kidd site to be designated national park

Tue, 24 May 2011 11:52:02 -0400

Made the journey to Catalina Island yesterday. Charlie invites several federal representatives and TV reporters to join his student researchers and representatives from the Indianapolis Children’s Musem.

I’m shooting still photos instead of video today...images that might be useful for use in an upcoming exhibit. The picture above shows Fritz Hanselmann and Charlie Beeker displaying the plaque that will explain the significance of the site to tourist divers. It will be mounted on a block of Indiana Limestone and cemented to the bottom.

Fritz did his IU graduate thesis on the Kidd investigation and it’s his document that historians will credit for what we now know about Capt. Kidd’s ship. He recorded everything Charlie’s team uncovered in the past four years.

Charlie is busy. He jumps in the sea in his clothes for this shot. He didn’t want to take too much time away from topside, where he is hosting military and civilian leaders from the Dominican Government. Even without a tank, he is patient as a couple of us snap our pics...then he’s gone, back to explaining the impact of the site’s designation on history and the island nation’s economy.

many interests celebrate undersea museum

Sun, 22 May 2011 21:22:55 -0400

I am lucky to see a major celebration today. Dominican hotel owners host an international gathering...all folks interested in one aspect or another in the recognition of Capt. Kidd’s last ride, the Cara Merchant. The whole affair turns into a bit of a party for hotel visitors before it is all over.

The Dominican government sends department ministers and navy brass, as well as historic conservation officials. Armenian researchers are there. The United States federal government is represented by operatives from US-AID and the Peace Corp. And joining Indiana University’s dive team from the Office of Underwater Science are other contributing members of the IU faculty and the top brass from The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis. Everyone is cheering the site’s special designations by the Dominican government, along with pledges to preserve the historic site. All are honored and thanked in usual fashion.

What follows was a bit of surprise. I suspect hotel execs think it would enhance the celebration by having its theater company dress as pirates...or at least a disco version of the more authentic thieves. They dance about as the history of Capt. Kidd is explained to a slightly surprised tourist audience of Germans, Italians, Chileans, Dominicans, and Americans.

Their confusion is cleared up as speakers explain how Capt. Kidd’s last ship is identified...how the process that followed may have cleared him of the charge of piracy (which, unfortunately, won’t help him how that he’s been dead from hanging for 300 years)...how details of the ship are revealed by an international research team, which traced its origins all the way to India and Armenia. A reproduction of the kind of cannon found at the site is then unveiled by a Dominican minister and IU’s dive program director, Charlie Beeker. The whole event takes on a bit of a fantasy feel as the theme from Pirates of the Caribbean plays over the PA (I run with the theme in the video above).

The video above captures the gist of the day. I run with the theme and add just a few moments highlights of the last four years of undersea work that led to the identification of the cannon and the eventual discovery of the ships remains beneath both the guns and an inch of organic rock created by coral and parrot fish. They unknowingly glued everything together, preserving it for discovery 300 years later.

Today’s event would not be possible without Charlie Beeker’s constant involvement here in the Caribbean. He has earned the trust of diverse interests on this island nation and preserving everyone’s cooperation and involvement is a constant balancing act. I’ve learned first hand that this is a top priority at the expense of other minor details. International relations often swerve and impact even my projects here, as plans constantly change without apparent reason. Exactly why is sometimes explained after the smoke clears, over a Presidente beer and a heaping plate of food that night. Alternative plans are made and I can rest easy

Thusly so I know what’s next for me: Tomorrow, it’s to the Capt. Kidd wreck to shoot more video and still imagery. The Children’s Museum in Indianapolis is hungry for visual media, to be included an upcoming exhibit!

school kids see dominican artifacts

Mon, 22 Nov 2010 19:30:32 -0500

This week brought dozens of fifth graders from Edgewood Elementary to the IU Underwater Science Lab during a field trip designed to dazzle. The kids saw Capt. Kidd’s cannon number four, raised last year from the resting site of his last ship, the Cara Merchant (amply chronicled in earlier blog entries). They handled cannon balls, inspected pottery, and even saw the most recent bones found in Dominican Republic’s Padre Nuestro cave.

I thought it was cool how all of these items were shown by the very researchers who discovered them. And the experts didn’t spare detail, going to the trouble of explaining processes like electrolysis and bone analysis...all in a way that meant something to these young minds.

This is the ultimate consequence of the Spring’s trip by several elementary teachers to the DR (check out the blog entries just prior to this one). That tour of sites got the adults excited about history again, and they were looking forward to passing their knowledge on to their classes. It was a pilot program that may be made permanent so that all science teachers in Indiana can apply to make similar trips.

In any case, judging by the faces I saw today, I suspect today’s field trip made science quite palpable to this grade school class.

A terrific article in the Bloomington Paper covers all the details.